He nodded slowly. “So… that’s it?”
She rolled her eyes. “Goddammit, what will it take to make you go away?”
“More than that. Is that it?”
“No.” She stood up, poured herself a cup of coffee that had long grown cold, then set it aside. “I just don’t want to be with anyone. Can’t you accept that?”
“Eve, look at me.” His voice was low and so warm. She turned stiffly, as if a giant hand forced her. Met his gaze because somehow he commanded it. His eyes glittered. “Tell me you don’t want me and I promise I’ll go away.”
She wanted to. Needed to. But could not. So she closed her eyes and said nothing.
“I thought as much,” he said quietly. “You need time, that’s fine. I have time. You need space, I’ll give you space. And if you ever tell me to go away and mean it, I will. But for now, I’m here. I came back because I needed to. Eve, I needed you.”
And then he was there, his arms tight around her again. He rested his cheek against her hair and she had to try, once more. For his own good. “I’m not a good bet, Noah.”
“Neither am I. Let’s just see where it goes, okay?”
She remained unconvinced. “I’ll hurt you,” she said tonelessly.
“I’ll hide the knives,” he said, wry amusement in his voice, but she couldn’t smile.
There was more, so much more, and she didn’t have words to tell him. He’ll figure it out himself and then he’ll leave on his own. And you can tell him “I told you so.”
She knew it would be a hollow victory. She pulled away. “Have you eaten?”
He frowned slightly. “Not since the last time you fed me.”
“Sit.” She had opened the fridge when her cell phone chirped. “Text,” she said and read the screen. Then froze, her mouth open.
Noah took the phone from her hand. “ ‘Didn’t your parents teach you not to get into cars with strange men?’ What the hell does that mean?”
Eve’s knees went weak and she didn’t fight when Noah pushed her into a chair. “That’s the last thing Rob Winters said before he killed me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Wednesday, February 24, 6:30 a.m.
He closed the cell and powered it down, his text complete. That ought to shake her up, he thought with a smile. Then he got back in his car and started for home. He still had about forty-five minutes before his wife’s alarm woke her up. If he wasn’t at home reading his morning paper, she’d ask questions he had no intention of answering.
He was quite fortunate to have a wife who slept so soundly. Of course the occasional sedative he put in her cup of evening herbal tea went a long way toward assuring her sleep was deep when he needed it to be. He was also fortunate she was so completely absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice what he did even when she was awake. She rarely read a paper, preferring science journals to television.
She moved in her own little world, after twenty years never suspecting a thing.
Nobody did. Because I am very, very careful and very, very good.
Wednesday, February 24, 7:05 a.m.
“Well?” David Hunter demanded. When Eve received the text, Noah had pounded on the door to wake him up. She’d been so pale, Noah had thought she’d pass out. Luckily Eve had come around on her own. Now Hunter was cooking breakfast with the intensity of a man possessed. Or a man terrified. “What are you doing to catch him?”
Noah rubbed his hands over his face. “We’re running a trace on the text. So far, it’s showing up as an unregistered number.”
“Throwaway cell?” Hunter asked.
Noah lifted his brows. “Maybe. Anybody can buy one.”
Hunter rolled his eyes. “I guess I deserve that one.”
“No, you don’t,” Noah said. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”
Hunter put a fluffy golden omelet in front of him. “When did you last sleep, Noah?”
“God. I don’t remember. Saturday night maybe?”
“You’re gonna crash if you don’t rest. When do you have to report in?”
“Nine.” He dug into the omelet and nearly sighed. “This is really good.”
“Thanks. When you’re done, go sleep in Eve’s bed. I’ll make sure she’s all right.”
She’d retreated to the shower, still pale, her eyes as haunted as if she’d seen a ghost. Noah guessed she had. “She needs to sleep, too.”
“She won’t,” Hunter said. “Not until she feels safe. She’ll catnap in that chair of hers.”
“You might want to hide the knives,” he said, and Hunter shot him a surprised look.
“She keeps them in a lockbox. I’ll lock them up when I’m finished cooking.”
“Okay, I’ll take the bed.” Noah blinked hard. “Who knew about the getting in a car with strangers thing? Who knew Winters said that to her?”
“We did, the family, because she told us. We never let that leak to the press.”
“Somebody knew,” Noah said darkly. He eyed Eve’s laptop. “Can I use it?”
Hunter hesitated. “Use mine. She’s a little… you know, about her computer.”
When Hunter returned with his laptop, Noah was practically scraping the plate clean.
“You want another?” Hunter asked, and Noah nodded.
“If you don’t mind.” He opened the laptop. “You’re a good cook.”
“I get a lot of practice. I do most of the cooking for my firehouse.”
“They’re lucky. I eat out of a microwave except on Sundays when I go to my cousin and his wife’s for dinner. If you’re still here on Sunday, you’re welcome.”
Hunter’s lips twitched. “Thanks, but you’ll be happy to know I’ll be gone by Friday.”
Noah didn’t smile. “Eve will miss you.”
“I’m hoping she’ll be too busy to miss any of us back home,” Hunter said dryly.
“Point taken.” Noah frowned at the search results on the screen. “Rob Winters gets me too many hits, most about serial killers. How many people did this guy kill?”
“At least six that we knew of. Evie would have been seven.”
Noah swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. “He was killed in prison, right?”
“Yes. I believe it was Tom’s hope that once the other cons knew Winters was a dirty cop there wouldn’t be enough of him left to scrape into a baggie. There wasn’t.”
Hunter’s voice had gone hard, making Noah remember that Winters had not only traumatized Eve, he’d traumatized an entire family. “Which prison? Was it in Chicago?”
“No, North Carolina. I can’t remember which prison, but my brother, Max, will know.”
“Let’s not make him remember if we don’t have to.”
Hunter poured his omelet concoction into a skillet, a muscle twitching in his taut cheek. “When my brother found Winters, the bastard had beaten Caroline almost unrecognizable and had his hands around her throat. Max deals with the memories, with the dreams, but there’s nothing about Winters he’s forgotten.”
Noah thought of Susan and the baby, gone twelve years now. Hardly a day went by that he didn’t think or dream of them in nightmares of his own. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“No need. It was just a very bad time.”
“Well, I think we can approach this from a different direction. Buckland’s researched Eve’s past. Let’s assume he ran across Winters’s threat while he was reading up in the online archives of some paper. Did Winters give any interviews before he died?”
“Probably,” David gritted. “Asshole liked to hear himself talk.”
Noah searched for prison interviews. Luckily there weren’t that many, as Winters had not survived long behind bars. Justice, he thought fiercely. I hope it hurt. A lot.
“Here’s one,” Noah said. It was a transcript of a live interview in which Winters described his assaults in detail, including the “cars with strange men” comment. He read to himself, sparing Hunter the memory. Noah’s head pounded as he read Winters’s boasts about Eve. His jaw clenched hard, his fists harder. I hope to God it hurt a hell of a lot.